Sharp Looks for the Short Form

The less-than-towering fellow can have a hard time finding clothes that truly fit. One designer is addressing the issue with smart basics and a personal touch

By

Alexis Swerdloff

Updated Nov. 9, 2012 4:08 p.m. ET

ENLARGE

THE FIT MASTER | Peter Manning in his New York studio
Adam Golfer for The Wall Street Journal

PETER MANNING WANTS to revolutionize menswear, one man-under-5-feet-8-inches at a time. "When I walk down the street, and I see these guys wearing pants hanging down around their ankles, it makes me so insane, and I think, I want to change their lives!"

Menswear designer Peter Manning specializes in collections geared toward the long ignored demographic of short men.

Mr. Manning is the fast-talking, gregarious founder of Peter Manning, a clothing line for short men that he launched earlier this year. He said the idea for the brand, one of the first of its kind, can be traced back to when he was a teenager and desperately wanted a pair of bell-bottom pants. "But my mother told me, 'Sweetie, I can't buy you bell bottoms. By the time I shorten them they won't be bell bottoms anymore!'" While he never did get those bell bottoms, after finding success as a real estate developer and the youngest Broadway producer to win a Tony (for "Side Man" in 1999), Mr. Manning had the time and the funds to develop his passion project. He works alone out of a studio in TriBeCa and the Upper East Side townhouse he shares with his husband, Lincoln Center's artistic director, André Bishop. The collection is currently only available online at Petermanningnyc.com, but he has plans to expand to a storefront.

While Mr. Manning himself is 5 feet 8 inches, and doesn't seem particularly diminutive, he belongs to the 25% of the U.S. male population that is his height and under—and that he feels is vastly underserved by mainstream retailers. He and fellow short men, he argues, have been forced to pay a "tailor tax," the inevitable fee to get shirts and pants altered when buying clothes off the rack. "Guys like us have been paying hundreds and thousands of dollars on every piece of clothing we buy," he said. "It's not fair." Many stores do offer free tailoring, but Mr. Manning counters that the quality is spotty and that having to alter basics like polo shirts and jeans is especially bothersome for all the men who can barely stomach shopping.

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Mr. Manning then whipped out a copy of Vanity Fair magazine, bookmarked to a page with a photograph of famously short billionaire Ron Perelman. "Look at his cuffs," he said. "They are rolled up twice. And look at how his shirt hangs. He's got billions of dollars, and he can't get a shirt that fits him."

Mr. Manning's line, for which he created an original sizing system (clothes come in a one through five, each size taking into account height and weight), features classic, reasonably priced separates and, starting this month, a line of blazers handmade by legendary New York tailor Martin Greenfield. Those are slightly more expensive than the rest, at $795 each, but, said the designer, "they last forever."

Mr. Manning said that he gets constant fan mail from customers, as well as girlfriends and mothers, thanking him. "I feel like I'm giving dignity to these guys who've felt shafted so long," he said.

Unlike women who have plus-size and petites sections and taller guys who can go to their "big-and-tall" stores, short men have been pretty much ignored. As a result, many have found strategies to outfit themselves.

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Sam Spector, a stylist who is 5 feet 5 inches and works with celebrity clients including noted short-guy actor Daniel Radcliffe, said that his trick is going to department stores at the beginning of the season when they still carry one of each size. "After a few weeks, that one suit in a size 34 will be gone," he said. Mr. Spector is also partial to brands like Club Monaco, J. Crew and All Saints, which make pieces in an XS. And he's not above hitting the boys' department. "I have a Brooks Brothers boys' blazer that I've had for years," but, he said, "you're limited with boys' stuff. The fit tends to be boxy and the armholes are too small."

Even resigning oneself to the tailor tax doesn't always work. When it comes to altering a suit off the rack, Mr. Spector said, "the proportions tend to be way off, with the pocket on the blazer in the wrong place."

‘'When I see these guys wearing pants hanging down around their ankles, I want to change their lives.'’

"I think most brands and retailers don't really realize the size of the market," said Imran Amed, the founder and editor of the website the Business of Fashion, who is himself 5 feet 4 inches. "I have the additional problem that not only am I short, I am very slim. The most frustrating thing is finding pieces that I really like, only to find they are not produced in a size that fits me." The holy land for short men, he said, is Asia: "Shopping in Tokyo is like a dream. Everything fits, and the quality is great. If I could, I'd go to Tokyo every six months to shop." For those who can't, he recommends brands like Band of Outsiders, Dior Homme, Topman and Acne, which are relatively short-man-friendly.

For Playboy.com fashion columnist Elliot Aronow, an unpleasant shopping trip a few years ago really hammered home how ill-equipped department stores are at dealing with their shorter clientele. "I was looking for a suit and the sales guy looked at me and asked, 'Are you a gymnast, perchance?'" Mr. Aronow, who said that he is 5 feet 6 inches on a "good hair day," has since become a "bespoke kind of guy," and gets most of his suits made at Brooklyn Tailors in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn.

That's not to say that stores are completely ignoring their shorter shopper. Eric Jennings, the vice president and fashion director of menswear of Saks Fifth Avenue, said he orders about 15% of tailored clothing in smaller sizes because of demand. He added that requests for small sizes from more modern brands—Giorgio Armani, Burberry and Hugo Boss—are on the rise. This increase is not only because of his short clients, he said, but because, "men as a whole are more interested in fit right now." Mr. Aronow pointed out that the shift in menswear toward a more tailored look is actually having positive spillover effects for small guys. "Now smaller, slimmer fits are even coming into Banana Republic, J. Crew and Old Navy," he said.

Is it enough to make a difference? "It's possible," Mr. Spector said, "that the number of short guys who care about fashion is really small." Or, he adds, "maybe most small guys just aren't wearing clothes that fit them."

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